Mobile weapons carriers, e.g. tanks and other vehicle-mounted cannons comprise barrel-type weapons, e.g. a cannon, a munitions bunker or magazine containing the rounds to be fired and, frequently, means for transferring the individual rounds into the breach of the weapon.
In German open application No. 1,578,093, for example, an automatic loading device is provided for a cannon which utilizes a carrousel magazine which rotates the round-receiving stations past a fixed location at which the rounds can be successively removed from the angularly indexed magazine and transferred to the breach of the cannon. The loading device which effects the transfer is fixed in position, nonrotatable and is adapted to withdraw each round axially from the magazine and swing the round into the breach of the cannon.
This arrangement has the disadvantages that for each loading operation, the entire carrousel must be stepped and hence the entire mass of the munitions carried therein must be accelerated after standstill and braked to align the next round with the transfer mechanism.
Because of the large inertia of the magazine, this operation takes a comparatively long time and the drive and brake mechanism for the carrousel magazine must be comparatively massively dimensioned.
Yet another disadvantage can be found in the fact that a mobile weapons carrier frequently is provided with a variety of munitions for different purposes, ranges or targets, stored in a single magazine.
When it is necessary to select a particular munitions type, therefore, it is frequently necessary to rotate the entire magazine until the particular round reaches the loading position, thereby delaying the loading operation still further.
Finally, a massive rotating carrousel-type magazine requires an expensive drive system and journaling arrangement which must be maintained by time-consuming operations at a high cost, thereby increasing the maintenance downtime of the weapon and reducing reliability in many instances.
It should also be noted that the earlier system occupied an inordinate amount of space which is at a premium in mobile weapon carriers.